This is a question that I receive from time to time, and the answer is always the same: an engineer. This is a person who is responsible for the design and construction of a certain product or building or anything that requires an engineer’s expertise.
Staff engineers are a sort of subcontractor who does certain tasks for a company. They aren’t really employees of the company, but they are still employees of the company. It’s usually better to avoid using the word “employee” because it can be seen as demeaning.
The problem is when you think of the product or building you are working on, it is often the people who are doing the work that are the employees. If you are using the word employee and the company that you work for is using the term employee, then its a very bad thing indeed. Also, if you think of yourself as an employee of a company that you work for then you are really thinking of yourself as a subcontractor.
I have seen posts lately where people are trying to convince me that the definition of a “contractor” is actually the same as the definition of a “employee.” I am very much not a fan of that. I am a contractor. I am the guy who put down his hours on a project, I pay people to do work for me, and I am the guy who provides the money to do this work. I am not a subcontractor.
I get the feeling that a bit of the definition is changing, but I agree it is a bit of a muddle. My definition is still as I have outlined above. A subcontractor is still the guy who is hired to do work for me. If you are a contractor and you are not a subcontractor, you are still a contractor.
So in summary, a contractor is a person who hires a company to do work. A subcontractor is the person who hires a company to do work for him. I see no difference between the two.
I’m assuming you are talking about engineers. The majority of people who create software code are still engineers. It’s just a trend that seems to be going on.
In my opinion, the last thing any software developer should see is a subcontractor. You should always be aware of the code you are working on. You should be constantly evaluating how you are integrating with others. How are they coding things, and if you are not sure if all parts of the system are working together, would you work with someone else? This is called a “traceability” problem.
Staff engineer is a term used to describe someone who is responsible for the coding of the software that is going to be used by a project. Its not a term you would hear in polite company. I actually prefer to think of someone who is responsible for the implementation of a piece of software as a developer. But a subcontractor is a term that we need to know more about.
Staff engineers are often referred to as developers, or programmers. While programmers are responsible for the programming logic of the system, the actual code that a subcontractor writes is called a subcontractor’s code. A subcontractor is someone hired by a company to work on a particular project. Because a subcontractor needs to be able to understand the code of the project, they need to have a strong background in programming. There’s a lot of confusion between the two.
